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via @aanand, and because I forgot to bookmark this when I read it the first time. Good, straightforward points.
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"I wanted to compile a list of online, Web-based tools that Web engineers can use for their work in development, testing, debugging and documentation." It is a really good list (I say this mainly because the first thing on the list is RequestBin, which is the thing I always forget the name of).
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"A little paper tiger stood on the table, the size of two fists placed together. The skin of the tiger was the pattern on the wrapping paper, white background with red candy canes and green Christmas trees.
I reached out to Mom's creation. Its tail twitched, and it pounced playfully at my finger. "Rawrr-sa," it growled, the sound somewhere between a cat and rustling newspapers."
Ken Liu's "The Paper Menagerie" is just a lovely short story. Sad, deft, minimal, very much worth your time. Might have had a little sniffle.
Week 5
18 November 2012
A few different directions to focus on this week. Monday and Tuesday saw me wrapping up a piece of work with Storythings, having finished up a few nice pieces of code – though the documentation that accompanied it turned out to be as important for demonstrating the work to the client.
The rest of the week focused on business development and quite a lot of admin – quite quiet, as a result, but some interesting meetings to potentially build on, perhaps in some new directions.
The RSC work will launch next week – quite excited to finally take the wraps off it. It was great to see Natalia’s piece in the same series of commissions go live.
Also, the announcement of my Four Thought talk on Thursday – which means next week will involve trying to hammer out a draft before I take a brief holiday.
Looking back: this was very much an echo of the week before, really. But good to be plugging on, building things up, and exploring what might be coming soon. Onward.
Upcoming Speaking: Four Thought
15 November 2012
Quick note: I’ll be talking at a recording of Four Thought at the RSA in December. The talk will eventually be broadcast on Radio 4.
A provisional title for what I’m doing is The Coded World. I’ll be talking a bit about a lot of the recent buzz about “learning to code”, what the values of it are (and aren’t), and a bit about the modern condition: of living in a world where our actions are shaped, and enhanced, by working and living alongside software. What it’s like to share out lives with machines to think with, as it were.
And I’ll get it down to fifteen minutes at some point. It’s taking shape nicely, though, so fingers crossed.
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Hurrah: Natalia's project – detecting motion/noise in various corners of the RSC and telling a story about the institution, as a result – is now live. Really lovely piece of work.
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"In school most people got to try drawing or playing instruments. Trying out code should sit in the same category: as a creative pursuit that you should at least try before you decide whether you like it or not. There is a huge drive now to get kids to do just that, whether it’s to give them skills required by the modern world or whether it’s about teaching creative ways of thinking. CodeClub is one of the initiatives that has the potential to not just show how much this is needed, but provides the solutions. Kids will be okay." [this is good]
Week 4
09 November 2012
Monday and Tuesday were spent with Storythings, and a lovely gang of developers (and friends) working on an internal hack day for a charity: building prototype products to show them what’s possible with a centralised content API. There are two more days next week on this. I’d wrapped up a small prototype by the end of the second day, and have got an interesting, more data-oriented one to work up next week, which should be good. Lovely people to work with all around, though, and some excellent lunches over on Hanbury St.
Wednesday was mainly spent working on a pitch with Rachel from Caper. This was following up some work we’d done the week before – turning our ideas and sketches into writing that met the requirements of an application form. And making a video; that led to me breaking out Premiere and my voice recorder for the second time in two weeks.
The rest of the week turned into business development and working for myself. A few meetings on Thursday and Friday, which might turn into nice leads in future. And, on Thursday, some time hacking up a small prototype piece of software – partly to refamiliarise myself with a few auth techniques, and partly to scratch an itch for some friends. A few hours saw auth with Flickr and caching lists of photos up and running; hopefully I’ll get some time in the near future to wrap that project up, although as ever, finessing the interactions and UI is already growing as I think about it.
Other good news on Friday was the effective completion of the RSC project: the work is complete, and we’ve got a launch date for it. That’ll be when press releases go out, and when I can take the wraps off it, and finally show you all. That’s in a little under two weeks time. Exciting!
And that was Week 4.
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"…given a choice of ur-texts to inspire the scenius of creative technologists, I’ll take the Dan Dare and 2000 AD of Silicon Roundabout over the Atlas Fucking Shrugged of Silicon Valley any day of the week."
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"A day of support at Mutable Instruments’ is more commonly populated with “If you see a 100kHz square wave at this node, it means the integrator charges itself very fast, probably through the op-amp compensation cap only, not the external cap – check for a bad solder joint on C9” rather than “Have you checked that the power cord is plugged?” (though it happens). Furthermore, once kits get built, ideas of mods and firmware hacks crop up – all requiring expert guidance. All in all, the “support” role at Mutable Instruments is more like “product engineering – the lost levels” – and that’s why, following the introduction of a product – support can be done by no other than the designer of the instruments themselves…" Still, MI's products are getting increasingly lovely. I've always been tempted by a Shruthi, and the Anushri looks lovely.
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"Prototype iPhone apps with simple HTML, CSS and JS components." Looks nice; also, lovely splash site.